A new rumor claims Apple has been working with a carbon fiber maker for years, in an effort to develop new ways of using the material to create a device's outside shell.

Following up one of its earlier reports, Japanese Apple blog Macotakara reported on Tuesday that while current devices are currently available, Apple is looking to make something "completely different" than the norm. The report suggests that Apple could weave the fiber in a unique way that would be unlike what other manufacturers have done to date.

According to the rumor, Apple has been heavily researching the use of carbon fiber in its devices for at least three years. In that timeframe, Apple is said to have worked closely with a Japanese company.

The same site reported last month that Apple had ordered a large number of parts made of carbon fiber. That was taken to suggest that the company could be planning to build a new product made of the durable-yet-lightweight material.

Apple's interest in carbon fiber has been previously detailed in a number of patent filings by the company, including one from last month that described carbon fiber housings for a new MacBook design. Another patent application from 2010 described how Apple might use carbon fiber to make a lighter and stronger iPad.

The back of the current iPad is made from a single billet of aluminum, which increases the weight but also greatly improves the rigidity of the device. Apple's new iPhone 5 is 20 percent lighter than its predecessor thanks in part to a change from glass to metal back.

Originally Posted by Bagman
What happens when they get out of control........Infectious Apple nanites destroy civilization !!

You know, I've never really put much stock in the grey goo theory because the transmutation of matter is HARD. Really hard. Otherwise we'd all be driving solid gold Oldsmobiles powered by liquid helium. Heck, even making water is hard. Let's assume that the nanomachines can transmute nitrogen in the air into aluminum for the iPhone case. That's a big deal. It's a really big deal, because that's really hard. It take a lot of energy to do, and doing it in the scale needed to allow nanotech devices to use the product would be a spectacular accomplishment, because the work is really done at the Planck scale. The whole endeavor, really, is fanciful. Nitrogen to aluminum is too energy-wasteful to be meaningfully done, so unless these nanomachines are consciously given the material they're designed to transmute, they'll never self-replicate enough to cause problems. It's not like the remake of War of the Worlds where anything processed can be used as their fuel; that's not how it works. You could dump a cloud of sentient, malevolent nanomachines in a field, and unless the grass is made of tin, they're stuck.

You know, I've never really put much stock in the grey goo theory because the transmutation of matter is HARD. Really hard. Otherwise we'd all be driving solid gold Oldsmobiles powered by liquid helium. Heck, even making water is hard. Let's assume that the nanomachines can transmute nitrogen in the air into aluminum for the iPhone case. That's a big deal. It's a really big deal, because that's really hard. It take a lot of energy to do, and doing it in the scale needed to allow nanotech devices to use the product would be a spectacular accomplishment, because the work is really done at the Planck scale. The whole endeavor, really, is fanciful. Nitrogen to aluminum is too energy-wasteful to be meaningfully done, so unless these nanomachines are consciously given the material they're designed to transmute, they'll never self-replicate enough to cause problems. It's not like the remake of War of the Worlds where anything processed can be used as their fuel; that's not how it works. You could dump a cloud of sentient, malevolent nanomachines in a field, and unless the grass is made of tin, they're stuck.

In case anyone's interested, the original patents they had on this basically implied that the fibre would be knitted or woven into custom shapes.

In other words, instead of laying down flat sheets into a curved mould as everyone does, they were thinking of knitting a 3D shape for the sheet so that it fit better, looked better, had better strength and required less sanding and processing overall. I don't know if it's practical at all or if it worked, but I know they did a lot of extensive testing just around the time when the first iPad came out.

My understanding is that the scratch resistance of carbon fiber is very similar to the material used for the back of the iPhone 3G. It's just cloth covered with resin, not unlike fiberglass, so the scratch resistance is limited to the strength of the resin.

I did read an interesting article the other day about a company that developed a new version of carbon fibre using a liquid plastic as a setting and bonding agent instead of traditional resin. This new process allows carbon fibre to be used more in a standard molding process than the baking that current carbon fibre requires. Also it creates much lighter parts, up to 20% as often the resin is the heaviest part of CF manufacture. The parts are just as strong and far more intricate shapes can be created. I wonder if Apple is on to this ?